Maria Connolly, LPC
Emotional intelligence is twice as valuable as IQ in the business world, since the emotional health of the team directly impacts productivity, motivation, engagement and loyalty. This means a person has the emotional intelligence that encompasses an ability to 1) identify and manage one’s own emotions, 2) identify and understand someone else’s emotions, and 3) relate well to others personally and professionally even under the most stressful situations. This requires that a person be self-aware, self-regulating and empathetic. These relationship-based skills are ones wherein women certainly excel.
Disappointment is a difficult emotion to deal with because it’s painful and generally comes from a loss of some kind. And, for most of us, it triggers harsh, critical, judgmental self-talk. Is that your default setting, too? But the good news is we can turn it on its head and use it to our advantage. Yes, there are benefits of disappointment!
Commonly, we treat the body and mind as two separate entities. We think the body is for doing, and the mind is for feeling, thinking, and being. Yet, this incomplete view of ourselves can lead to long-term consequences. That’s why it’s important to understand how embodiment work can help a person heal inner conflicts and that nagging feeling of things being off.
“Real connection and intimacy is like a meal, not a sugar fix.” ~ Kristin Armstrong
Does the idea of being emotionally intimate sound amazing or scary to you? Fear keeps many people distant from others. As a result, they become loners or social butterflies that flit from one encounter to another, collecting acquaintances but no real friendships.
We all need close friends who are there for us through good times and bad. They are the people who love and accept us for who we are. But, for you, how close is close enough? Do you keep people at arm’s length? Or do you embrace them wholeheartedly? Or is your comfort zone somewhere in between?
“Be flexible but stick to your principles.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Have you ever made a decision that’s out of harmony with your values? It makes you feel terrible, doesn’t it? Yet even when we hold to our values, our emotions may leave us with mixed feelings that can be quite unpleasant. You’d think that if your decisions honor your values they’d always leave you with happy, good feelings, right? Why don’t they? And how can developing more emotional resilience help you cope?
“Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.” ~ Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
We have all been through some pretty hard times, and the world isn’t getting any rosier. There are so many ways to describe how people are feeling today — burnout, emotional exhaustion, mental exhaustion, mentally drained, emotional burnout, nervous exhaustion, overworked, over-stressed, over-committed, over-stimulated, and now we even have Zoom fatigue! And some of the tried-and-true methods for recovering from emotional exhaustion aren’t working.
